There is an ever increasing presence of a new class of Internet protocol (IP) enabled devices in enterprise environments. Typically, end user devices included devices such as cell phones, notebook computers, tablet computers, etc. which may need access to the general enterprise data network with either guest or employee privileges. The new class of end user devices, e.g., Internet of Things (IoT) devices, can include surveillance cameras, temperature sensors, smoke detectors, fire alarms, appliances, access control devices (e.g., door locks, etc.), equipment monitoring devices, environmental control devices, etc., which can include IP-based communication to report the information that they gather to other systems via a data network. In some real world deployment scenarios, these IoT devices may be deployed by personnel that may not be familiar with data networking or IP.
Consequently, it may be important in such environments to be able to deploy these devices and automatically connect the devices to a network and configure the devices for network communications with little or no upfront configuration (so called zero touch attachment) on the devices beyond the default settings that these devices are shipped with from the factory. It can also be important that the set of network ports that these devices could be connected to have very little static port configurations for adding the ports to a logical network. At the completion of onboarding of these devices into the network—they are supposed to end-up on the logical network (alternately referred to as a virtual private network (VPN) or a virtual services network (VSN)) which serves the real application for which the device is deployed. For example—surveillance cameras are supposed to end-up in the surveillance network.
Currently there may be little or no capability provide for which this operation is entirely zero touch from a device and switch point of view. SPB network attach procedures, to the extent they are currently defined, may be helpful when the device performing the SPB network attach signaling already has network management connectivity. For example, a wireless access point (AP) may require connectivity to and may be controlled by its management applications (WOS) while it signals an SPB attach (SPBA) requesting attachment to additional VSNs beyond the one used for its network management. Similarly an open network adapter (ONA), such as that made by Avaya, may first require connectivity to an software define network (SDN) controller before the ONA learns of the SPBA bindings that the ONA is supposed to signal. What has not fully been addressed in the above conventional systems is a need to automate even the initial step of the device getting its management plane connectivity in an SPB network.
Embodiments were conceived in light of the above mentioned needs, problems and/or limitations, among other things.